DISSATISFACTION WITH THE LPC HAS LED ONE CITY FIRM TO CONSIDER CREATING ITS OWN LAW SCHOOL.

ROBERT VERKAIK TAKES THE CITY VIEW ON THE COURSECity law firms have never been completely happy with the Legal Practice Course (LPC) or the Professional Skills Course (PSC).

Ever since both inceptions the City has consistently argued that legal educators have been preparing solicitors for just one thing -- life as a high street practitioner.The dissatisfaction is sharpened by the fact that many City law firms sponsor trainees and therefore finance a large chunk of law schools' budgets.

The perennial irritation of welcoming trainees who have a good knowledge of probate and yet are woefully ignorant of the rules relating to a public takeover has forced at least one City firm to propose setting up its own law school.

The firm, Allen & Overy, has gone as far as finding a prospective partner for this enterprise -- De Montfort University.

It was due to the concern expressed by Allen & Overy and other City firms that the Law Society brought forward its review of the LPC, by a year.In general the results of the review have pleased the City but the Law Society's decision to put a moratorium on approving new courses until 2000 has, as one senior training partner put it, left the City firms 'gobsmacked'.

The moratorium may not put an end to Allen & Overy's intention to press forward with its own private law school.

Andrew Hodge is head of education and training at Allen & Overy.

'In the first year our recruits were telling us that the course had been terribly easy and they had wasted quite a lot of time.

These were concerns shared by many other firms.'Moreover, City firms are also unhappy with the paucity of knowledge of pure law shown by trainees at the start.

Says Mr Hodge: 'The level of substantive legal knowledge seems to be a bit below par and legal research skills are weak.' Legal research is particularly important to firms which like to put their trainees to work as soon as they join the firm.

Says Mr Hodge: 'I've heard from other firms of some curious definitions of some fairly straight forward legal terms which have obviously been guessed at.' Some of these have become part of law firm folklore.

For example, intellectual property was once defined by one fresh-faced trainee to a City law firm as 'thinking about buying a house,' and bailment as a 'surety who turned up to court with every intention of standing bail but left his wallet at home'.Christopher Carroll is head of training at Travers Smith Braithwaite.

He is quite adamant that there is an 'alarming black hole' in terms of 'black letter law'.

This he says has been brought about by a desire to teach students useful practical skills at the expense of pure law.Says Mr Carroll: 'What they have done is provided a quite useful training for somebody who needs to work in a hi gh street practice, where they can issue a writ, draft a will and convey a property.

In this sort of practice you don't really convey properties or draft wills.' He adds: 'We would rather they spent more time learning about the law and less time on how to talk on the telephone and write letters which we can teach in no time.'Judith Mayhew is the newly-elected political leader of the Corporation of London and director of education and training at City law firm Wilde Sapte.

She echoes both Mr Hodge's concern over legal research and Mr Carroll's fear that the course is orientated too much towards high street practice.

But she particularly sees a need to increase the emphasis on 'legal writing and drafting' while reducing the teaching and practice of oral skills.She also identifies a complete lack of knowledge of solicitors' accounts and solicitor accounting rules amongst new recruits.

'Trainees,' she explains, 'when placed in practice really ought to have some awareness of the difference between solicitors' accounts and client account.' Ms Mayhew says it is inappropriate for firms to have to teach trainee solicitors solicitors' accounts rules.

Following City pressure solicitors' accounts is now back on the 1997 LPC syllabus.

Debrah Ball, head of education and research at Lovell White Durrant would like see 'investment business' completed at the LPC stage.When all these concerns are placed against the increasing cost of the LPC there is a genuine worry that it simply does not represent value for money.

An individual trainee at a City law firm will cost as much as £100,000 before being admitted as a solicitor.

Even medium sized City law firms are funding college or training places for about 25 students at any one time and two and a half million pounds is a lot to spend on a less than perfect training.Mr Carroll goes as far as questioning the need for a college-based LPC.

'They learn very fast once they are in the office.

They learn both the law and the practice of law.

It's much harder to do all that in law school.

They spend a whole year learning something they could learn in much less time.

If you are doing it for real you really concentrate.' He also suggests that the continuous assessment aspect of the course makes it 'easy' to get very good marks.

'What we would really like is a two tier course, one for the high street and one for the City practice.

When you bear in mind that the City provides half the training contracts around the country it seems ludicrous that the whole system is weighted largely towards the high street practices with the exception of a few special options.

I think we have a genuine grievance.'Says Mr Hodge: 'The amount of time within the nine months which was given to City-type issues, -- plcs, group structures and mergers and acquisitions -- was very limited because the core subjects were geared towards high street work.' For example, the conveyancing part of the syllabus was residential conveyancing, while litigation was personal injury.

'An enormous amount of time on the course was being spent on issues which weren't terribly relevant to us,' he added.The Law Society hopes the new LPC, born out of its review, will satisfy the City's concerns and urges City firms to give it a chance to bed down.

The review, which covered all sizes of firms, found employers were generally satisfied with the LPC.

Says Simon Baker, chairman of the training committee: 'The training of solicitors should provide a basis for development and continued progression.

I would ask firms to bear in mind that people do not qualify once and for all time.'JESSICA SMERIN TALKS TO MICHAEL LONG ABOUT THE lAW SOCIETY'S REVIEW OF THE PROFESSIONAL SKILLS COURSE AND ITS NEED FOR A MAJOR IMAGE CHANGE.'The Law Society shouldn't need to force firms to send their trainees on the PSC because it is for the firm's own good,' says Michael Long.

'We have got to convince them that it is for their own benefit which is a long haul but I think it can be done.'Mr Long is the chairman of the review group which the Law Society's training committee has set up to study the operation of the Professional Skills Course (PSC).

The course, which trainee solicitors are supposed to complete during their traineeship, has only been running for two years.

At a March meeting of the Law Society's Council, the training committee chairman Simon Baker said: 'I have to acknowledge the present degree of unpopularity of the PSC and the level of misunderstanding of its training value.'Mr Baker went to describe how some firms artificially advance the start date of training contracts and then send trainees immediately on the PSC, while others refuse traineeships to those who have not already completed the PSC at their own expense.

Proposals to change the rules so firms are prohibited from doing this will be considered by the Law Society's Council next month.Firms resent the amount of time and money involved in sending trainees on the PSC.

For the smaller firms the expense is a disincentive to taking on a trainee.

'The burden is quite enormous,' says Mr Long.

Firms also want to know why the PSC modules cannot be covered during the Legal Practice Course (LPC).

City firms, which usually also fund their prospective trainees as LPC students, want to know why they cannot be allowed to teach the professional skills which a trainee needs, in-house.

An additional frustration is their perception that the PSC is not geared towards City work.

For example, the financial services module, one of the five compulsory elements of the PSC, is largely product-based.

City firms want their trainees to learn about the stock market, not private client work.Mr Long thinks the Society is partly to blame for widespread dislike of the PSC.

'There's a great deal of ignorance about it and that's largely the Law Society's fault for not selling it,' he says.

'Those who know about it are not unhappy but its image is dreadful.' Part of the problem, says Mr Long, is that most solicitors have not been on the PSC and do not know much about its content.

'It came as a nasty surprise to me when I found my trainee having to go off for days when I had work for him to do,' he adds.The review of the PSC has been largely driven by the fact that the LPC has just been reviewed and proposed new guidance on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) has been drawn up, subject to approval by the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct (ACLEC) and the schedule 4 procedure of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990.

The aim is to harmonise and integrate these three stages in a solicitors' training.

Mr Long describes the PSC as a 'bridge' between the LPC and CPD.

He also points out that in the PSC the training institutions have an ideal opportunity to introduce new lawyers to their services and encourage them to come back to undertake their CPD training.

This, he says, should motivate the institutions to market the PSC better and offer cut-price fees, perhaps even treating the PSC as a loss leader.

Mr Long stresses that he must not anticipate the conclusions of the review which will go to the training committee in June with the aim of putting the bulk of the accepted recommendations in place for September 1998.

However, he says that he would like to see the five modules -- currently covering professional conduct, advocacy, investment business, personal work management and accounts -- reduced to three.

The accounts course would be incorporated into the LPC, leaving advocacy and oral skills, professional responsibilities, and financial and business skills.

While a core of compulsory courses needs to be retained, Mr Long wants to see the number of optional elements increased.

'Elective elements give the firms and institutions more scope to develop the subjects and make it more hands-on instead of just teaching initial rules,' says Mr Long.He would also like to see a greater range of PSC providers.

He even talks of the possibility that some firms might be authorised, individually, in groups or via local Law Societies, to provide their own in-house PSC courses.

'When firms are signing the forms saying their trainees have duly completed their articles, why can't they also say they've duly completed their training?' he asks.

'No firm's going to lie about something like that.'As part of the PSC review, questionnaires were sent to all firms employing trainees, all providers of the PSC and a sample of newly qualified solicitors who had completed the course.

Only 350 were returned.

The respondents expressed general concerns about the cost, in time and money, of the PSC.

However, specific comments about the course content and objectives were quite positive, particularly on the advocacy module which responding firms believed to be particularly relevant.Mr Long believes these positive responses can be built upon to revolutionise the image of the PSC.

'We've got to be tough and targeted where regulation is really needed,' he says.

'But to a very large extent I think we can trust solicitors' firms to do things properly.' And he adds: 'People have got to appreciate that it's doing them good and even enjoy it.

It can in fact be enjoyable.'THE CHAIRMAN OF THE LEGAL PRACTICE COURSE BOARD, DAVID YATES, SETS OUT THE CHANGES TO THE LPC THAT HAVE BEEN RECOMMENDED BY A LAW SOCIETY REVIEW GROUP.

THEY WILL COME INTO EFFECT IN SEPTEMBER 1997.

MEMBERS OF THE REVIEW GROUP CAME FROM LAW FIRMS OF DIFFERENT SIZES, COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY AND INCLUDED COURSE PROVIDERS.

THEY TOOK VIEWS FROM FIRMS, IN-HOUSE LAWYERS AND COURSE PROVIDERS AND ALSO FROM THE TRAINEE SOLICITORS GROUP AND LOCAL LAW SOCIETIES.The main points emerging were:-- the LPC is improving and the Law Society's quality control procedures are working-- General satisfaction by both trainees and employers with the LPC-- The LPC was an improvement on the former Law Society's Final Course-- 'Root and branch' reform of the LPC was not necessary-- Greater flexibility in the LPC was needed so that students who wished to take a more specialised track could do so-- A better balance between the compulsory and optional subjects, with greater importance being attached to the latter group, was desirable-- Less time should be spent on wills probate and administration-- Conveyancing should be offered in either a commercial or private client context-- Negotiation skills have much less significance to potential trainees than other skills elements of the course and practical legal research and writing and drafting should receive a greater emphasis-- If the ability to specialise were introduced, a sufficient course mix should be preserved to ensure that those students who had not secured training contracts when they commenced the course could keep their options open-- The current course was 'over-assessed'-- A measure of uniformity in the content and implementation of assessment regulations was desirable-- Best practice in relation to information technology should be encouraged-- Solicitors' accounts must be includedTHE MAIN CHANGESMost existing LPC courses start with a foundation and introductory course.

These courses will be abandoned in favour of what has been termed a 'core' course covering the existing areas of a typical foundation course but with a greater emphasis on the law of trusts, taxation and tax planning as well as probate and administration of estates.

This 'reserved' area for solicitors will now be dealt with as part of the core programme.The 'compulsory' areas will consist of litigation and advocacy, as before, together with conveyancing but in the case of this last subject, teaching institutions will now have the option of delivering the course either in its present form or with a particular emphasis on the private client or the commercial context.Institutions may, therefore, be able to offer more than one conveyancing course.

Half the time devoted to the compulsory areas will be spent on business law and practice, including focusing more on substantive business law, as well as business accounts and taxation.

There is a rationalised assessment system, involving both in-course assessment and examinations.The so-called 'pervasive' areas will be largely unchanged from the existing LPC, but there will now be more emphasis on taxation.

Solicitors' accounts (formerly covered in the PSC) will be included.The 'skills' will be writing and drafting and practical legal research, interviewing and advising and advocacy.

Negotiation as a formally assessed skill has been dropped although it is likely that it will still remain an effective teaching medium for other aspects of the LPC.The skills, for teaching purposes, are to be integrated into both the compulsory and the elective (the new terminology for the options) areas of the course though they will be assessed in the context of the compulsory areas only.Practical legal research and writing and drafting are to be assessed twice, the other skills will each be assessed once.INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYThe Legal Practice Course Board will be expected to monitor the use of IT and the teaching of the benefits of information technology in solicitors' practices through its assessment visits to institutions.It will encourage greater emphasis on IT matters through dissemination of 'best practice' and regular information technology workshops.It will use the assessment visits (the visits undertaken on a regular basis to all legal course providers by panels of practitioners and academics appointed by the Legal Practice Course Board to ensure the maintenance of standards on the LPC), to exert the appropriate leverage on any institutions that appear to be lagging behind in Information Technology provision.

It is intended to keep this aspect of student training under regular review.ASSESSMENTThere has been a reduction in the use of unsupervised assessment on the LPC.

This will relieve the burden of over-assessment on some aspects of the LPC.

It will also solve the problems which unsupervised assessments have presented to some course providers with regard to plagiarism and dealing with failures in particular subjects.

There has also been a rationalisation in the number of assessments that are carried out.Further, it will be a condition of all future validation or revali dation of providers (all courses go through a rigorous process of validation and regular revalidation by a panel of experienced practitioners and teachers appointed by the Legal Practice Course Board as a precondition for any institution to offer the LPC) that the course assessment guidelines issued by the Law Society's chief training officer must be adopted.THE ELECTIVESThese were formally known as the options.

Under the old regime there was some evidence that the optional subjects were taken less seriously by students.The individual subjects which students can elect to take vary considerably from institution to institution.The electives now provide the opportunity, to those students who want it, for a certain measure of specialisation.

However, in order to achieve this, as well as to ensure that the electives are studied in greater depth, students will be required to take three subjects rather than two.Each elective must be of broadly equal length and delivered over a minimum aggregate total of 100 hours over ten weeks.

The electives will now be assessed by one assessment per subject which must be an examination or other supervised assessment.